The Old Weevils 
from the surrounding sea-bed and sunk to 
the bottom of the oozes, now turned into 
marl, there are stupendous deposits of 
shells, of every shape and size. It is a 
molluscs’ burying-ground, with hills for 
tumuli. I dig up Oysters eighteen inches 
long and weighing five or six pounds apiece. 
One could scoop up from this enormous heap 
Scallops, Coni,? ‘Cytheres,? Mactre, 3 
Murices,* Turritelle,> Mitre ® and others 
too numerous, too innumerable, to mention. 
You stand stupefied before the intense vital- 
ity of the days of old, which was able to 
supply us with such a mass of relics in a mere 
hole in the ground. 
This necropolis of shells tell us also that 
time, that patient renewer of the harmony 
of things, has mown down not only the in- 
dividual, a precarious being, but also the 
species. Nowadays the neighbouring sea, 
1Or Cone-shells.—Translator’s Note. 
2 Bivalved Ostracods.—Translator’s Note. 
3A genus of molluscs including the Surf Clams and re- 
lated species—Translator’s Note. 
Paes ed with a rough, spinose shell—Translator’s 
ote. 
5Gastropods with an elongated, turreted shell—Trans- 
lator’s Note. 
6Or Mitre-shells. Gastropods with a fusiform shell 
suggesting a bishop’s mitre—Translator’s Note. 
II 
